prev story

next story

One Woman’s Detox Diet Diary

Shape Up! Readers, have you ever considered trying a detox diet? I have (but I love food way too much)! I know tons of people who went on one after Beyonce announced she lost 20 pounds on the Master Cleanse a couple of years ago for her role in Dreamgirls. Recently, GLAMOUR’s assistant managing editor, Betty Kim, decided to try a three-day juice cleansing program. She kept a journal of the daily play-by-play to share with all of us, so I’m handing it over to her today. Welcome Betty!

Things you need to know about me:

I’m 5’3”, I’m petite (no, I didn’t do this to lose weight), I’ve gone grocery shopping once in the past year, I eat out/get takeout 4-5 times a week. I skip breakfast and eat a pretty healthy lunch, and then I eat anything I want for dinner. I graze throughout the day (which, if you work here, means the consumption of candy, chocolate and cupcakes on a fairly consistent basis). I’m a stress-eater. Oh, and I love fried food.

My motivation:

Lately I’ve found myself aimlessly eating all the time, even when I’m not hungry. So in an effort to break out of this rut, I’ve decided to do a three-day juice cleanse. I’ve always wanted to try it, so what better time than now? Plus, it’ll help restart my engines just in time for bathing-suit season and also help me reevaluate what I’m putting into my body. So, those were my goals; here’s what actually happened:

Prep Day (a.k.a. the day before the cleanse)

All the sites I read told me to prepare at least one to three days before I started my actual cleanse. This was to prevent my body from going into “shock,” and I was warned on many occasions that not doing so would be “extremely detrimental to my health and well-being.” Sounds serious. So I told myself that I’d just have fruit and vegetables all day. No biggie, right?

Wrong. It didn’t help that I was home for the weekend (i.e., food paradise). That morning, my sister made French toast (with challah bread, no less), so who am I to refuse that? One piece slowly turned into two (See! This is my problem! No self-control!), but I justified it by telling myself it was too early in the day and therefore didn’t really count. Then I went to my parents’ house, where my mom had made some Korean barbeque for lunch, and I gobbled down a big plate of that. Fruit and veggies? Um, not yet. For dinner, I tried to eat a healthy Greek salad, which I thought would comply with the precleanse regimen...until I realized it was topped with about a pound of feta cheese. Yeah, not such a good start.

Day One: no cheating; energy level great; hunger-level low

I’m loving it! I feel great today. I’m not going to lie: All of the juices taste pretty darn nasty. Anyone who says they “like” the way they taste is crazy. Most taste like vegetables after they’ve been strained through a dirty sock. A few taste like that but with some ginger or mint added at the end. (These are supposed to be the better tasting ones, by the way). The extreme dirty-sock-tasting juices are especially hard to get down, and it doesn’t matter if you guzzle or sip it because the taste lingers in your mouth no matter what (remember, it’s not like you can pop in a mint afterward to get rid of that funky flavor). But, hey, they must be working because I haven’t felt hungry, which actually surprises me. (Maybe I’ve been overfeeding my body?) Usually I’m constantly eating and doing this cleanse is making me realize how much fuel my body really needs. I even have the energy to exercise! Tonight, though, my boyfriend came over and he ordered some spaghetti Bolognese for dinner. It was so hard to smell that and not cheat. Uhhhh! TORTURE! I need to resist the food temptations I usually give into so easily. But it’s really, really tough.

Wow. This day is soooooo hard. So hard. If you can get through this day, you’re in the clear. From the get-go I can feel a dip in my energy level. The juices are now predictable...and, therefore, predictably disgusting. But I’m forging ahead. The worst juice for me is the one with carrot. Something about the taste is so vile. I tried to hold my nose and drink the whole thing at once, but I couldn’t. My body was like “Reject. Reject. Reject.” I didn’t want to projectile vomit all of my cube-mates either, so I had to keep my gag-level to a minimum. Anyway, so what was supposed to take me 30 minutes to drink is now taking upward of two hours, so the timing of when I’m supposed to drink each juice is all screwed up. Not sure what kind of toll that’s taking on my body, but I’m feeling really low today. Low on energy, low on fuel, low on mood. Anyway, did I mention how hungry I am today? I’m sooo hungry like crazy hungry. Like hungry to the point where I’d consider eating one of those been-there-all-day-or-more-likely-all-year hot dogs from the 7-Eleven across the street. I mean, I feel like I’m going to go into shock. Like my body’s in shock, and I need to (no, I MUST) eat something real right now. My head hurts too...my senses are dulling. I drank some water with lemon, which I thought would help, but is just making me feel worse. I’m going to drink some herbal tea. Or maybe just try to sleep this off...

Day Three: cheated: few sugar snap peas at the 12th hour (oh, well!); energy-level moderate; hunger-level mid to high

Wow, am I glad I didn’t cheat last night! I got up this morning and thought I’d wake up ravenous but I didn’t. The first three juices went down better than yesterday. My energy level is at about what it was the first day. I’m really excited to be able to eat something tomorrow. All I can really think about is food, but not in a cheeseburger-pizza-pasta kind of way. Doing this has made me crave the kinds of foods that are actually good for me. I can’t wait to just eat a salad...or some fish...or some veggies. I’ve lost about four pounds, which the shallow part of me loves. Plus, it does feel fabulous to lose that constant bloat I had going on, which I now realize is probably due to my high-salt diet.

But I decided to meet some friends after work for drinks, and, man, was that a horrible idea. No, I didn’t cheat. I brought my juices with me and stuck to drinking just that. I was just a terrible, horrible, no-good GROUCH the entire night. Everything got to me and annoyed me and made me frustrated like I’ve never felt before. I could feel myself getting agitated at the slightest thing, and my non-medically based self-diagnosis was low blood-sugar. So to keep from making a complete idiot out of myself, instead of my last juice, I had a few sugar snap peas. It was like night and day: All of a sudden I could think clearly and I was back to my bouncy, happy self—in literally minutes! Amen, to food!

Day Four: first post-cleanse day

I’m so glad the juicing is over. I’m looking forward to eating healthier but also eating the foods I love. My mind is going haywire right now thinking of all the things I’ve been missing. I had more sugar snap peas for breakfast (hey, they were the only things I had in my sorry-state-of-a-fridge) and then a salad for lunch. I used dressing which I’m sure is a no-no, but whatever....I only used a bit. A rogue piece of chicken made it into my salad (thank you salad-maker man!), which tasted delicious (you’re not supposed to eat meat for a few days post-cleanse). The hardest thing now is restraining myself from eating everything I’ve been craving these past few days. While I was on the cleanse I thought eating a salad would make me feel so full, so satisfied...now, not so much. After eating it, the salad’s having the opposite effect on me, and I kinda just want to eat more of the bad stuff. Nothing healthy: I want pasta, pizza, wine, cinnamon pretzels, bread...

For dinner, I could NOT bring myself to eat another salad. I know that I’m only supposed to be eating raw veggies for the first two days post-cleanse, and although the thought of eating that a few days ago sounded so delicious, right now it’s just making me feel ill. So I went to the local health-food market and got some baked salmon, a veggie salad with feta cheese, some steamed kale, and a tiny piece of chicken enchilada (soooo not allowed!). Then I just ate and ate and ate. It tasted so good. And in 30 minutes flat, it was all gone. Then I had this uncontrollable urge for some cinnamon sticks from Annie’s Pretzels. Before I knew what was happening, I had walked to the store, bought them and was wolfing them down on my way back to the apartment. No, I couldn’t even wait to get back into the building. To my surprise, what I imagined would be buttery, sugary goodness in my mouth, ended up tasting just kinda “blah.” It seems the idea of them was more enticing than how they actually tasted. About an hour or so later, my skin started to puff up like a Garbage Pail kid and then I was in real regret. My stomach was doing somersaults. What had I done? I knew there’d be a hefty price to pay to eat what I wanted so quickly. But what I didn’t expect was to feel disappointed while I was eating this stuff. If this gluttonous fare doesn’t even really taste good to me, why do I think it’s so great? Maybe I need to be more aware of what my own body is telling me. Maybe if I did that, I could curb a lot of my unhealthy food habits alone. Maybe if I stopped to actually think about how I felt after I ate something, I’d be more in tune with what was good and bad for me instead of assuming something was good because I had been programmed into thinking it tasted good. Hmm...maybe I did learn something after all.

Would I ever do another juice cleanse? Not in a million years. You couldn’t pay me enough to starve myself silly again.

----

Thanks for sharing, Betty! Have any of you guys tried a detox diet? Would you? After hearing Betty’s story, I, of course, had to ask my nutritionist (Body by Glamour’s Rachel Beller, R.D.) for her take on juice cleanses. After all, they don’t exactly sound healthy.

Although there’s no scientific evidence to support the claims that juice diets work, and Beller in no way recommends them for longterm weight loss, she says they can be used—in moderation—as a jumping off point for healthy eating. “Having a detoxification period before starting a healthier lifestyle is like pressing a reset button,” she says. “It enables you to break away from old habits and make big changes in eating habits as you start noticing what you choose to eat.”

But Beller warns that cleanses can also have the opposite effect. Many detox dieters feel so deprived upon completion of the detox that they binge, she says. “The absolute best thing to do is find a life-long nutritional system that works for you on an everyday basis.”

Still, if you’re dead-set on trying a cleanse, Beller says to keep these tips in mind:

1. Remember that any kind of fasting is safest with a healthcare professional’s consultation. Long-term detox dieting can create dangerous electrolyte imbalances and even cardiac failure. So see a registered dietitian and figure out a plan that can work for you in the long-term. 2. Don’t fast for long periods of time. By depriving your body of nutrients you might find it difficult to focus, or suffer other side effects, like headaches, runny noses or diarrhea. 3. Detox diets are most ideal for generally healthy adults. Cancer patients and people with diabetes, low blood sugar or eating disorders should stay away from detox dieting. Diabetics can put themselves at serious risk for reaching dangerously low blood sugar levels. Teens, pregnant women, and the elderly should also avoid detox diets. They are particularly in need of calories and nutrients for healthy growth and development.

So there you have it! What did you think of Betty’s hilarious experience? If you have ever done a detox diet, what was the best and worst part of your experience? If not, would you still consider doing one after reading this? Do tell!